In Might 1855, American newspapers had been abuzz with speak of a marriage. The bride and groom weren’t society folks or European royalty: they had been Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, abolitionists and girls’s rights activists. Though in some ways their marriage ceremony ceremony was typical of the time—the bride wore a stunning gown, a priest carried out the ceremony, and a marriage breakfast adopted—it was no strange marriage ceremony, for it started with a protest.
Lucy Stone was born in a farmhouse on Coy’s Hill close to West Brookfield, Massachusetts, on August 13, 1818. As she matured, she turned fascinated by two causes—the abolition of slavery and the growth of ladies’s rights—that had been to form her life. When Oberlin School in Ohio started admitting girls, Lucy decided to attend, though it took a number of years of saving her earnings as a schoolteacher to fulfill the schooling. At Oberlin, impressed by the ladies who had taken to the lecture circuit to advocate for the abolitionist trigger, she determined to pursue a public talking profession herself.
Nineteenth-century Individuals liked a great speech, and Lucy turned fairly profitable at her chosen profession. It was not, nevertheless, a simple life. Lucy’s lectures took her to small cities and rustic areas, the place she usually needed to keep in no matter primitive lodgings had been obtainable. Lucy additionally needed to courageous hostile audiences. At one assembly, somebody threw a prayerbook at her; at one other, she was squirted with a firehose.
It was in 1850, whereas Lucy was touring by way of Cincinnati, that she first met Henry Browne Blackwell, an abolitionist who additionally supported girls’s rights. He had sterling examples of sturdy girls in his circle of relatives: In 1849, his sister Elizabeth Blackwell turned the primary girl in America to acquire a medical diploma, and his sister Emily would get her personal medical diploma in 1854. Henry himself, nevertheless, had some problem in settling to a occupation, and eventually started working a ironmongery store in Cincinnati together with his brother Samuel. When Lucy went into the shop to money a examine, Henry was intrigued by Lucy, whom he thought would possibly make an appropriate bride for Samuel. Accordingly, he delayed cost of the examine in order that Samuel might ship the funds to Lucy in individual. However Samuel took no real interest in Lucy—she was in all probability not wanting her finest, having simply recovered from typhoid fever—and it might be one other three years earlier than Lucy and Henry had their subsequent encounter. (Samuel would go on to marry Antoinette Brown, Lucy’s shut good friend from Oberlin. Antoinette was one other trailblazer: the primary American girl to turn into an ordained minister in a mainstream Protestant denomination.)
In the meantime, Lucy had adopted the so-called Bloomer costume (named for Amelia Bloomer, one in every of its proponents), which was basically a below-the-knee-length gown worn over pantaloons. The Bloomer garment was hardly conceited, however these girls who dared to put on it had been frequently heckled and harassed. However Lucy, who discovered it each sensible and flattering, was undeterred.
Henry subsequent noticed Lucy on the New England Anti-Slavery Conference in 1853. This time, he was smitten—though he confided to his brother that he didn’t look after the Bloomer gown she wore. He sought out abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who gave him a letter of introduction however warned him that Lucy was not fascinated by marriage. Undaunted, Henry turned up on the Stone household home in Coy’s Hill, the place Lucy was standing on a desk and whitewashing the ceiling. The pair went for a stroll. Lucy consented to correspond with Henry, and he promptly despatched her an extended letter and a translation of Plato. He additionally informed her that he had “realized to love” the Bloomer costume.
Over the subsequent few months, Henry relentlessly courted Lucy, in individual and by mail. However Lucy was reluctant to wed Henry, at the same time as she admitted that she was rising keen on him. She feared that marriage would deprive her of her cherished freedom.
Lastly, in September 1854, Henry made a grand gesture: whereas touring on a prepare certain for Tennessee, he encountered a enslaved lady touring along with her homeowners. Having requested the lady if she needed to be free, and obtained an affirmative reply, he put her off the prepare in Salem, Ohio, with the assistance of an confederate who fled along with her. Years later, he mentioned, “I used to be informed later that this act of mine was what gained me my spouse. If that was so, I obtained probably the most heavenly reward that ever got here to earthly man for any deed.” By December 1854, the couple had been engaged, regardless of Lucy’s lingering doubts. “You might be your personal mistress & at all times will stay so,” Henry assured her. He instructed that the 2 make a protest in opposition to the legal guidelines governing marriage, which closely favored the person. A number of different reforming {couples} had completed the identical in years previous.
The marriage occurred at Lucy’s household residence on Might 1, 1855. Lucy, who had lastly given into public strain and had almost deserted Bloomers for public put on, wore a silk gown, coloured within the shade generally known as “ashes of roses”; Henry wore a mulberry coat and white waistcoat. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a fellow activist who was then a Unitarian minister, officiated. First, nevertheless, the couple learn the “Protest” which that they had drawn up. It reads:
Whereas we acknowledge our mutual affection by publicly assuming the connection of husband and spouse, but in justice to ourselves and an ideal precept, we deem it an obligation to declare that this act on our half implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the current legal guidelines of marriage, as refuse to acknowledge the spouse as an unbiased, rational being, whereas they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with authorized powers which no honorable man would train, and which no man ought to possess. We protest particularly in opposition to the legal guidelines which give to the husband:
1. The custody of the spouse’s individual.
2. The unique management and guardianship of their kids.
3. The only possession of her private, and use of her actual property, except beforehand settled upon her, or positioned within the arms of trustees, as within the case of minors, lunatics, and idiots [intellectually disabled persons].
4. Absolutely the proper to the product of her trade.
5. Additionally in opposition to legal guidelines which give to the widower a lot bigger and extra everlasting curiosity within the property of his deceased spouse, than they offer to the widow in that of the deceased husband.
6. Lastly, in opposition to the entire system by which “the authorized existence of the spouse is suspended throughout marriage,” in order that in most States, she neither has a authorized half within the selection of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her personal title, nor inherit property.
We consider that non-public independence and equal human rights can by no means be forfeited, aside from crime; that marriage must be an equal and everlasting partnership, and so acknowledged by legislation; that till it’s so acknowledged, married companions ought to present in opposition to the unconventional injustice of current legal guidelines, by each means of their energy.
We consider that the place home difficulties come up, no attraction must be made to authorized tribunals beneath current legal guidelines, however that every one difficulties must be submitted to the equitable adjustment of arbitrators mutually chosen.
Thus reverencing legislation, we enter our protest in opposition to guidelines and customs that are unworthy of the title, since they violate justice, the essence of legislation.
In reciting her vows, Lucy omitted the promise to “obey” her husband, however agreed to “love and honor” him.
The “Protest” was quickly reprinted in William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, in addition to in pamphlet kind. The marriage itself was extensively publicized, not the least by these editors who thought it amusing that Lucy ought to have behaved so conventionally as to marry.
However Lucy was not completed with taking a stand. She had determined to maintain her maiden title. Though she appears to have vacillated considerably concerning the matter, she signed letters to Susan B. Anthony after her marriage as “Lucy Stone,” and by the autumn of 1856 she was upset when she was mistakenly listed in a conference commercial as “Lucy Blackwell.” Whereas this choice generated little press, it was a extremely uncommon step for a married girl in the US within the nineteenth century; even at present, most married girls within the nation assume their husband’s title. Lucy can be generally known as “Lucy Stone” for the remainder of her life, and historical past remembers her nonetheless by that title.
In August 1855, Lucy confided to Susan B. Anthony that she had not accepted an invite to lecture as a result of she didn’t wish to lose the “alternative of securing the blessings of motherhood.” On September 14, 1857, she gave start to Alice Stone Blackwell.
Lucy Stone died at her residence in Boston on October 18, 1893, survived by Henry and Alice, each of whom would proceed Lucy’s marketing campaign for girls’s rights into the 20 th century. Her final phrases had been “Make the world higher.”
Sources:
Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Lady’s Rights
Andrea Moore Kerr, Lucy Stone: Talking Out for Equality
The Liberator, Might 4, 1855
Sally G. McMillin, Lucy Stone: An Unapologetic Life
Joelle Million, Lady’s Voice, Lady’s Place: Lucy Stone and the Start of the Lady’s Rights Motion
Leslie Wheeler, ed., Loving Warriors: Chosen Letters of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, 1853-1893
